Sources and quality of the references on femoroacetabular impingement: a review of the years 2011 to 2015

A systematic review was carried out in order to examine the current trends of the past five years in the literature on femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) and to compare the quality and the sources of the references in the literature published recently. 1,066 relevant studies covering 186,572 patients were identified. The number of publications increased over this period, with the most dramatic rise in the years 2011 to 2013. 73% (N = 786) of all the studies were of level of evidence 4 and 5. The proportion of publications that were of level of evidence 1, 2 and 3 doubled, that is from 16.1% to 28.7% between the years 2011 and 2015. Compared with earlier work there was a 3.5-fold increase in the number of publications over the past five years, with a shift towards an improvement in the level of evidence in the available literature on the arthroscopic treatment of femoroacetabular impingement.
Source: “Current Review of Musculoskeletal Medicine”, September 2016